User blog:Random-storykeeper/Game templates
You've probably been redirected to this blog post, looking for answers. Maybe a link on my userpage or talk page directed you here. Maybe you found it through or . Or maybe you just stumbled upon this post out of curiosity. Either way, this post serves to answer this one question: Why were names of game templates deleted? The answer itself is simple. The articles of their components either had little to offer or were repetitive to the game article itself. In other cases, the game article itself may have not had as much information to seem "full" - for instance, games with a continuous objective such as Super Puzzle Platformer don't have a lot to offer in terms of a walkthrough as opposed to 400 Years, where there are particular tasks that must be done in order to complete the game. But in case you want me to further elaborate, I didn't just suddenly decide to delete the components of the articles without any consideration to their content. When I first decided to delete a game template and all its component articles, I spent time reading through each and moving content I thought was significant to the game article. This gave the game article itself some more length, and also allowed for a more compact and concise version of the necessary information within the game. Each of these component articles I deleted had a chance to become their own separate articles before the content was merged with the game page. Now, with this added content, shorter game articles have more content. Is this style different from Nitrome Wiki's? Somewhat. Each game page still retains the similar sections you'd find on every game page, with subsections listing each of the components, in many cases. The content once found on the once-existing game pages are still there. You may find some of it presented differently, or perhaps merged with another section of the game page. I'll proceed to present a case-by-case explanation, to be more specific. Templates deleted Space Odyssey Yes, Space Odyssey, a template that linked to nothing more than two articles: one for the game itself, and another for its components. In order to make the decision whether to merge the content or not, I considered the game itself. Space Odyssey involves the one objective of survival with multiple ways to attain it. There isn't much to say about the gameplay, except that. There is no one way to survive, other than collecting as many turnips as possible and creating platforms. Given the fact that only three main components exist within the game itself (astronaut, turnips, platforms), and none of them have a particularly interesting backstory (if any at all), there was an insufficient amount of content added to the page. No, it wasn't the writer's fault or anything, that was just the nature of the game. Since the game article had only a bit of content that could be said, at most, and their components were nonetheless the same, I copied and pasted the information provided on the component articles into their own sections before deleting the articles and template altogether. I considered Space Odyssey to be much like Bump, and chose to model the page after the same sort of style I had given Bump's. Bump was given no game template for this same reason, allowing the article to grow to a size of almost 5000 bytes. Super Puzzle Platformer Again, the nature of the game overall was taken into consideration. Super Puzzle Platformer also has this "try to survive" objective, where you try to shoot blocks so that you always have a way to survive falling objects. Completion of the game is not possible, and the number of components were limited. I extracted information from these articles to put onto the Super Puzzle Platformer page before deleting most of the articles and the game template. What about shooter? I was going to delete the shooter page when I noticed the length and depth of information given on it, considering the weaponry and all. So far, I decided not to merge the content with the game page, but instead, integrate a link onto the Super Puzzle Platformer page so that the article is still easily accessible. Small Worlds Some might wonder about this one. Small Worlds, unlike Super Puzzle Platformer and Space Odyssey, can be completed. Like the other games, however, there is only one single objective, and multiple ways of achieving it. Writing a walkthrough for this game is impractical (jump up these pixels, and turn right at these pixels) and would remain quite vague if transcribed into text. There is a small amount of components that make up the game, and each of them are exclusive to the locations found within Small Worlds. As such, many of these components were better explained in the sections about each world rather as their own articles. I noticed that many of the worlds pages had almost no notable information to offer, because each world shares the same objectives, and only differs in appearance. This information could easily be added with a picture and some description to accompany it. For this reason, many of the articles about Small Worlds' components were merged with the Small Worlds article, though not an exact word for word. Almost all the content about lifts, power cubes and such are found within the Small Worlds article, if you read each section carefully. Conclusion Will other game templates be deleted, such as the ones for Tobe's Hookshot Escape? Possibly, but at the rate the THE article is growing at, length may not be as much of a concern. A lot of other factors went into the decision for the templates' deletion that don't just concern the points I explained in this blog post. What I can assure you is that I will never "blindly" delete content - that is, eliminate all pages just for the sake of eliminating them, with no reading over them whatsoever. If you think content is missing from these game pages, then you are more than welcome to add it. No, it's not because I gave you permission, but because it's a wiki. It's supposed to be open for you to edit. If you're wondering why I disabled comments for this blog post, I will assure you it was intentional. I imagine there would be complaints of some sort or other discussion to be brought up. Commenting on this blog post, however, won't help with that. Discussion here can easily go off tangent. Discussions on issues like these should be addressed on a talk page, or better yet, a forum thread of its own. Let's remember to utilize these instead of blog comments. Thank you for taking your time to read this. Category:Blog posts Category:Wiki news